Hyperformance: Using Competitive Intelligence for Better Strategy and Execution Review

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Hyperformance: Using Competitive Intelligence for Better Strategy and Execution ReviewGreat book. Very interesting discussion on how to apply the techniques in real life. Really liked the appendix, which reviews various personality assessment tools and describes how they can be used.
Very appropriate book for all corporate competitive intelligence staff, but also for those in Sales, for CEOs and product developers.Hyperformance: Using Competitive Intelligence for Better Strategy and Execution Overview

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: Business Process Management and the Balanced Scorecard : Focusing Processes on Strategic Drivers Review

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: Business Process Management and the Balanced Scorecard : Focusing Processes on Strategic Drivers ReviewRalph Smith says that his intention in writing this book as to "provide some common sense thoughts and implementation tips for process management and the balanced scorecard". He has done this, and done it very well. This book is packed with good practical suggestions about how to efficiently and effectively populate a Strategy Map. The link between process and strategy, ie between Business Process Management and the Balanced Scorecard (and Strategy Map), is also well made. In my own consulting work I have found that Strategy Maps can be an important key to process-based management. The Process perspective of the Strategy Map can be a portal into the processes of an organisation - both figuratively and, given the right modelling tool, literally. I would have liked to see more about how to first determine what are the core and supporting processes of an organisation; building a high level process model is a necessary step before you begin to analyse the processes. Smith's focus on the near forensic understanding of the context of a process is important and useful analysis techniques are described. Too often we leap in to modify (improve?) processes without knowing anything like enough about them. If you have an interest in finding out more about getting organisations to engage with process-based management, you need to read this book.: Business Process Management and the Balanced Scorecard : Focusing Processes on Strategic Drivers Overview

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What I Didn't Learn in Business School: How Strategy Works in the Real World Review

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What I Didn't Learn in Business School: How Strategy Works in the Real World ReviewContemporary conception about strategic management practitioners - consultants or corporate citizens - is rather unreal and hyped. It is based on the notions of `cracking cases' and forcing favorite frameworks popularized in bestsellers as well as business schools. Acquiring these, one could get excited about `doing strategy' as learnt through literature, lectures, and make-believe group exercises. This happens with many aspiring strategy professionals, including also consultants, especially fresh entrants. Their predicament is reflected in "What I Didn't Learn in Business School," which is a novel approach to enlightening the reader about the realities of strategy development and implementation.
The book takes the reader through Justin's journey of his first strategy consulting experience which becomes full of surprises, counterintuitive contexts, and personal pains. As he takes on a `sprinter study,' Justin realizes that many of his frameworks would not apply, or were misfits, or lacked bigger (strategic) sense, or were remote to realities of the client. He also learns directly the nature of tensions within an organization despite the apparent need to align, the nature of `data' that is (or is not made) available outright, and the collaborative role of a strategy team. Business behaviorism, divisional disparities, data dependence, `revenue power,' team tensions, etc. all are real and play crucial role in the strategic study. Simultaneously, what seems to be working well for the more experienced team members of his consulting firm - is also an enigma to Justin, all the way through the end as he learns and unlearns. Full of edutainment!
The content is full of reality, not idealism. The style is engaging. It is a fast, absorbing read; an experienced strategist can chuckle through it over a weekend and a strategy student/practitioner can appreciate it fully in a week. The strategy basics are rooted is academic rigor (Jay Barney is a doyen of strategy and Trish Clifford an accomplished consultant). Though not a strategy text, it ensures and enlightens about the underlying theory's practice. The assumptions and cautions are introduced at the right times. This is a more realistic coming to life of strategy in a corporation than many a book and lecture profess but do not deliver so well. Not since Bob Blake and Jane Mouton wrote "The Diary of an OD Man" has a consultant's development been narrated so absorbingly. This is not a critique on business schools like for example, Mark McCormack's "What They Still Don't Teach you at HBS," or Anita Simonton's "Confessions of a Management Consultant Turned CEO." Rather, "What I Didn't Learn in Business School" is an experiential evolution expressed in the strategist's own words as he rapidly matures into a role (and career) that he will own for the rest of his life.
The book has an excellent chapter-wise Reading List which is actually a good backdrop for a short strategy course with the various `core topics.' An essential reading for all strategy practitioners - present and future - and aspiring consultants , this could also serve as a pre-reading (and post-revision) for fresh MBA students, especially before they take their required strategy capstone courses.
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Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World (Wiley) Review

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Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World (Wiley) ReviewThis book is a gem. It is a rare book that I would recommend equally to senior executives and students thinking about a career path, but this is such a book. I agreed to review this book for the publisher and received a free copy. I've known the author since the early 1990's when the U.S. Government first tried to learn how to do commercial intelligence, calling it Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). They still don't get it, for the same reason most executives don't get it: arrogance, ignorance, and a complacency that comes from having too much money and not enough accountability.
Before laying down my notes, let me first place this book squarely in the top twelve books in English. This is the one I would recommend to anyone as a starter, followed by:
Ben Gilad, Blindspots (Infonortics, UK), order online from them directly
Early Warning: Using Competitive Intelligence to Anticipate Market Shifts, Control Risk, and Create Powerful Strategies
Measuring the Effectiveness of Competitive Intelligence: Assessing & Communicating CI's Value to Your Organization
Super Searchers Do Business
Super Searchers on Competitive Intelligence: The Online and Offline Secrets of Top CI Researchers (Super Searchers series)
Business and Competitive Analysis: Effective Application of New and Classic Methods
Building & Running a Successful Research Business: A Guide for the Independent Information Professional
The New Competitor Intelligence: The Complete Resource for Finding, Analyzing, and Using Information about Your Competitors
Keeping Abreast of Science and Technology: Technical Intelligence for Business
The New Craft of Intelligence: Personal, Public, & Political--Citizen's Action Handbook for Fighting Terrorism, Genocide, Disease, Toxic Bombs, & Corruption
Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time
The last are mine, as with all my books free online at Phi Beta Iota, the Public Intelligence Blog. There are MANY books in this field, some listed at the back of this book. For me it boils down to culture, structure, sources, and process. CULTURE: from the CEO to the Chief Content Officer or Chief Knowledge Officer, do the bottom-line bosses understand that Competitive Intelligence is worth at least 20% of their gross in new revenue or avoidance of lost revenue? STRUCTURE: Is there at least a six person CI shop with a direct report relationship to the CEO or no less than one down from the CEO? SOURCES: Does the CI staff have a budget for serious research including out-sourcing of special studies and integration of appropriate processing power? PROCESS: Is the CI staff integrated into both the day to day decision-making as well as the strategic forward thinking? Nothing is dumber than "this is what we've decided to do, tell us about the path."
Now my notes on this book, which fully satisfies as an overview of the above and as an introduction to the broader literature.
1. External matters. It has been a long time in coming, but both the commercial intelligence industry (which is emergent from the scattered competitive intelligence industry) and the key customers including law firms are starting to realize that the customer's future needs, unstated needs, and the totality of the external environment are vastly more vital than internal data mining also badly known as Business Intelligence. One shipping executive told me they learned the hard way that in one particular African country with a strong textile industry, the regulatory and corruption context was so bad that the fashion cycle was OVER before they could get the finished goods out of the country. Never assume anything and forget the past.
2. Truth matters. The author is very polite on this point, one that the U.S. Government at the political and senior executive level still does not appreciate. I am totally enchanted by the early quote from the chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, "When things are not going well, until you get the truth out on the table, no matter how ugly, you are not in a position to deal with it." That one quote made this book worthwhile for me.
3. Executive short-falls. I like to quote Ben Gilad, who along with this author and Jan Herring and Dick Klavans and Babette Bensoussan are among my most respected colleagues: writing in BLINDSPOTS: replacing myths, beliefs, and assumptions with market realities (Infonortics UK 1996): "Top managers' information is invariably either biased, subjecive, filtered or late." Also from Gilad: "Using intelligence correctly requires a fundamental change in the way top executives make decisions." The author does a devastatingly elegant job of putting executive naivete in its place early on, the same section serving as a "lay of the land" for any aspiring commercial intelligence practitioner.
4. Definitions and Scope. The middle of the book is great on definitions and strong in comparing market research with competitive intelligence on multiple levels. In Figure 3.1 on Page 38 th author lists the following as being essential elements of any comprehensive endeavor (I put them in alpha order) Culture; Customers; Demographics; Distributors; Economy; Government and Industry Regulations; Other Industries; Prospects; Substitutes; Suppliers; Technology; AND Competitors. I will never forget the head of the French steel industry lamenting in 1993 that after spending a ton of money on studying all other national steel industries, they got cut off at the knees because they failed to realize plastic would be a substitute for automobile parts including underside parts.
5. Data, Information, and Intelligence. The author does a very fine job, the best I have seen by anyone else, distinguishing among data (pieces), information (a generic collage) and intelligence (actionable answers for specific executives making specific decisions). I like the general discussion of know versus don't know, today versus tomorrow, and the integration of assumptions (question them), changes (recognize them), and strategies (have at least one). I especially like the author's emphasis on encouraging dissent and re-evaluating soup to nuts every single year.
6. Creating or Employing a CI Capability. This portion of the book is intended to be an overview and it does a fine job there. The author also reviews sources and puts Google in its place, but fails to mention that advanced search (not what Google offers, but understanding its actual code language and using it to create subsets within subsets) offsets some of Google's shortfalls. The author properly notes that "it's not about software," and provides proper emphasis on the human aspect of intelligence, something I address in comprehensive manner with my Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy at the Public Intelligence Blog.
7. Applications. Chapter 7 details more than a dozen applications of CI, with over 70 examples of how and when to use CI.
8. Myths and Advantages. The book ends with a chapter on the 13 myths of CI followed by another on the 15 advantages of CI, and as tempted as I am to list them here, I will simply note that they also make the book worthy of purchase in and of themselves.
This book has been endorsed by Cyndi Allgaier, Babette Bensousson, and Jan Herring, whom I know to be among the top dozen English-language practitioners, and while I am focused more on creating a World Brain with embedded EarthGame that brings all eight tribes of intelligence together (Academic, Civil Society, Commercial, Government, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, and Non-Governmental), I believe this book to be the new leader, the new best in class offering for anyone thinking about "getting a grip" on reality so as to survive.
The author has done all of us a great service in producing something that is easy to read, up to date, and a great starting point for anyone from the CEO of Exxon (poor fellow) to a student at any community college wondering about being a Chief Sustainability Officer versus being a Chief Knowledge Officer--NEWS FLASH: you cannot be one without the other, do both.Competitive Intelligence Advantage: How to Minimize Risk, Avoid Surprises, and Grow Your Business in a Changing World (Wiley) Overview

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